Building a resilient workforce: the why, what and how
Redefining workforce resilience
The term ‘workforce resilience’ is well used but highly ambiguous. The word ‘resilience’ conjures up images of stoic individuals battling through a storm against all odds. But is a group of tough individuals rolling with the punches really what we mean by or want from a resilient workforce?
In our view, a resilient workforce is one that can thrive in an unpredictable environment rather than just surviving through gritted teeth.
For organisations to thrive, they need to be as adaptable as the employees they depend on. They need to enable their employees to be proactive and excel, rather than hold them back with inflexible and outdated ways of working.
Why is workforce resilience important?
The days of the stable organisation operating in a predictable market are over, or at least shelved for the foreseeable future. Here’s why.
- Digital impact. Digital technology is having a huge impact across all industries, accelerating the pace of change, redefining business models and disrupting established ways of working. The Covid pandemic has accelerated this trend – organisations are no longer able to wait and see, they need to take immediate action.
- Mobile workforces. A globalised economy and more mobile populations are resulting in a more transient and flexible workforce.
- The need for efficiency. Greater interconnectedness and competition across global markets mean that inefficient businesses cannot survive.
- Employee expectations. Employee expectations of their working experience and work/life balance are shifting. People are increasingly self-reliant and want to take control of their career – how they work and develop.
- Fluid work patterns. The job for life has long since been consigned to history, and 9-to-5 workers clocking up a 37.5-hour week in the office are a dying breed.
The need to cope with all this change and uncertainty is what makes workforce resilience so essential in today’s world. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that organisations need to be able to adapt while still retaining cohesiveness, a sense of common purpose and a focus on maintaining their competitive edge.
What makes an organisation resilient?
A resilient workforce needs systems, processes, people, and technology that are aligned behind common goals and values, and that are robust but flexible.
Rigid processes and inflexible working practices need to evolve, enabling organisations to be primed for constant change.
But this flexibility must not undermine organisational strength. Maintaining a strong organisational alignment and robust processes is essential, particularly across areas such as compliance and financial management.
The essential elements of resilience
We believe a resilient organisation needs the following characteristics.
- Ability to adapt quickly to changes in external environment (such as digital disruption, economic shocks and new legislation).
- Capacity to flex without breaking (such as scaling up and down, reconfiguring the organisation and reallocating resources in response to new opportunities).
- Efficiency embedded in every part of the operation to stay competitive, particularly when faced with newer, digital-first or low-cost competitors.
- Strong core culture and ethos to maintain a shared sense of cohesion and purpose, even while buffeted by external forces and the need for rapid change.
- Engaged and motivated employees with the right skills and support to work at their best, all of the time.
- Strong leadership from managers who lead by example and with empathy and emotional intelligence, to drive a culture of change and instill resilience in others. If employees are not inspired to take a proactive role, the ability of the organisation to react to external changes will be reduced.
Resilient organisations need to make the most of their biggest asset: their people. Individuals have proven time and again that they are infinitely adaptable, but they need to be enabled and supported if they are to thrive. For example, employees need ongoing development to keep their skills relevant in a changing world.
Adaptability in the workplace sometimes lags behind the way people live outside of work. Organisations need to develop and support their people so that they are as open to change in the workplace as they are at home.
The role of technology in delivering the resilient workforce
In our view, workforce resilience now depends on more than adaptable people and strong leaders. We believe it is essential that people are enabled and supported by technology.
It is clear that technology can and will drive significant changes to both the workforce and the business. Organisations can use technology to gain a competitive advantage, while those that choose to ignore advances in technology will soon get left behind – regardless of their resilience in other areas.
Innovative technologies can have a transformative impact on HR and payroll. Automated processes deliver greater efficiency and enable better decision-making. Legacy systems often do the opposite – holding back organisational efficiency, adaptability, and creativity.
Here are the key areas where we believe technology can drive significant workforce resilience benefits.
- Streamlining. Simplification and automation of time-consuming processes, freeing up resource to focus on driving productivity.
- Cohesiveness. Better communication and engagement tools enable better alignment across a dispersed workforce.
- Employee empowerment. Tools that give employees control over their development will boost engagement and wellbeing.
- Insight. Better visibility and data on the things that matter enable more informed and proactive business decisions.
In our view, having the right underlying technology – enabling your employees to engage, adapt and improve – is critical to developing workforce resilience.
How a resilient workforce helps organisations to thrive
We believe that there is a strong correlation between workforce resilience and organisational success. This can be explained on a number of levels.
- Agility supports outperformance. An agile workforce enables organisations to outperform competitors in responding to new market opportunities/risks, potentially delivering revenue growth or market share gains.
- Intelligence supports better decisions. Using systems of intelligence leads to greater collaboration, better insight and more informed decision-making, opening the door to improved profitability, increased innovation/product rankings, and positive customer feedback.
- Wellbeing supports productivity. The more resilient your employees – the more engaged and fulfilled they are – the less likely they are to leave. You can grow and nurture your talent without disruption and reduce your recruitment costs. Lower churn and absenteeism lead to higher productivity per employee: the ROI of wellbeing.
- Technology supports efficiency. The right technology achieves automation and increased efficiency, enabling you to reduce opex, raise profitability per employee and improve customer experiences.
A truly resilient workforce helps organisations to adapt and flex in response to unpredictable conditions, whilst retaining robust processes, improving employee engagement and making working practices more productive. All of which are currently hindered by out-of-date and inflexible HR and payroll processes and practices.
How to measure workforce resilience
So how do you know if you have a resilient workforce? How can it be measured? We have developed a workforce resilience index that enables you to do just that – evaluate how resilient an organisation’s workforce is.
The MHR workforce resilience index uses the following overarching measurement criteria.
- Organisational resilience. The ability of your organisation to be agile – to quickly respond to a changing working environment without taking your foot off the accelerator. This might include how easily you can flex the skill base of your workforce, how well your teams collaborate to support innovative thinking (wherever they may be – in the office or offsite/mobile), and how quickly you can become aware of problems or opportunities in order to mitigate or capitalise.
- Process resilience. Are your HR systems and processes just static systems of record or are they true systems of intelligence that are fit for a future focused on interaction and productivity? Resilient systems and processes are likely to be cloud-based, agile and intelligent in order to maximise the impact of HR and the value or your people.
- Employee resilience. We believe that there is a positive link between employee wellbeing and business performance. How engaged, happy, fulfilled and empowered your employees are has a direct impact on their performance, and therefore on the performance and resilience of the organisation. There are a number of factors that drive strong engagement, including strength of leadership, company culture/values, communication, reward and recognition, personal development and accountability.